Professor Block’s research is at the center of the vibrant academic debate about the true nature of consciousness. His work often straddles the boundary of philosophy of mind and cutting edge neuroscience research, focusing on the philosophical conclusions about consciousness to be drawn from such research results.

In this talk, he discusses the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness, and encourages the audience to participate in recreations of a series of fun studies that investigate the nature of consciousness without requiring the subjects to report anything. He uses these results to illustrate his theory that it’s possible for a subject to have conscious experiences that the subject isn’t paying attention to. Finally, he concludes by explaining why the advancements of Artificial Intelligence, applied to understanding human cognition, are unlikely to solve the hard problem of consciousness.